These Photographers Chasing Bioluminescence in New Zealand

On warm, moonless nights in New Zealand, they scavenge on the beaches in search of an elusive, glowing quarry.

They’re not hunters, they’re chase photographers bioluminescencea natural phenomenon where glowing algae give an ethereal, electric blue aura to the crashing waves.

New Zealand is a particularly good place to “chase biology,” as the enthusiasts out there call it. Even so, it is very difficult to predict where and when bioluminescence will appear. And photographing in near complete darkness—at 3am, standing knee-deep on the surf, holding a tripod—offers extra hurdles.

“It’s very, very difficult to get her sight, and sometimes it depends on blind luck,” said Matthew Davison, one of these 37-year-olds, who lives in Auckland and sometimes stays outside until sunrise.

“But that’s part of the charm and the adventure, that’s what makes it exciting because it’s so hard,” he added. “When you find it, when it hits the blue gold, it’s a beautiful feeling.”

The ‘burglar alarm’ is ringing

Bioluminescence is relatively rare on land, but very common in the ocean. About four-fifths of animals living 200 to 1,000 meters (650 to 3,300 feet) below the surface are bioluminescent. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The glow comes in different colors on land, but in the oceans it often appears blue-green because it cuts seawater the best.

Bioluminescent organisms – from fireflies angler fish — they create light from the energy released by chemical reactions in their bodies.

While many scientists, including Aristotle and Darwin, have been fascinated by bioluminescence for centuries, the behavioral motivations for it are still a mystery, he said. Kenneth H. NealsonProfessor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, who has studied the phenomenon for decades.

Scientists often think that organisms become enlightened to communicate with each other, to lure or detect prey, or to alert or escape predators.

Professor Nealson said the most popular explanation for why algae glow in the oceans is the “burglar alert” hypothesis. He claims that as large fish swim, organisms glow to scare off smaller algae-eating fish.

Coastal waters turn blue when algae living near the surface of the oceans thrive, especially in nutrient-rich waters. Certain flashes of blue-green light come in response to pressure changes created by the waves as they strike.

Professor Nealson said the waves pose no threat to the algae, but algal blooms still light up because the algae are programmed to respond to pressure changes created by fish as they swim in the open ocean.

“This luminescence probably doesn’t help the algae at the top of the wave that are emitting light at all,” Professor Nealson said. “But if they’re a little further from the sea, that could be a very good behavior mechanism,” because it could help them scare away predators.

see blue

Photographers who hunt bioluminescence in New Zealand, many of whom work day jobs, often say summer is the best time to spot it. (Summer in the Southern Hemisphere lasts from December to March.) Nights after rainstorms are best because water flowing from land to the ocean often contains nutrient-rich substances that attract algae.

Davison, a product developer for a tech company, has a method for finding bioluminescence. He first examines satellite images to identify coastal algal blooms. It then scans other indicators such as wind direction and tide patterns to predict where the waters might shine.

He’s an exception though. Other photographers mostly rely on a mix of luck, intuition, and the occasional tip from neighbors who see blue sparks during beach walks.

“If I’m being completely honest, probably eight of the 10 times I’ve caught it, it’s either by chance or just a gut feeling that it might just be around,” said Grant Birley, 48, who works in the orthopedic industry. Bioluminescence during a two-hour cruise along New Zealand’s North Island coastline. “Not an educated guess at all.”

An intelligence source is private. facebook group It was created two years ago for people in the Auckland area to discuss their observations of bioluminescence. Stacey Ferreira, one of the group’s directors, said it now has more than 7,000 members and welcomes around 2,000 new members each summer.

Ms Ferreira said she created the group so that others could “take the beautiful phenomenon off their to-do lists,” as she did in 2020. “It was great!” she wrote in an email. “People of all backgrounds participated, including talented photography enthusiasts, bioluminescence researchers, scientists, families, and everyone in between.”

After Dark Shots

For “biohunters”, finding the glow is just the beginning of an unforgettable image capture process. After arriving at a beach, they usually set up a tripod at the surf and shoot for hours, sometimes in pitch black, like blue specks flickering intermittently along the shore. Sometimes the vibration goes off after a few minutes and they return home empty-handed.

When “Bio” is available, deciding how long to reveal an image is a major challenge. Mr Birley said the timing can range from one second to about two minutes, and it can be difficult to check on the fly by looking at a small camera screen to see if the shooting times are correct.

Another challenge is that bioluminescent images sometimes contain details that are not visible when the shutter is clicked. This is because a camera sees much more than the naked eye, especially in long night exposures.

“You look at it during the daytime and you say, ‘There’s a tree and a sunset and a cliff and I’m going to cross to the left,'” said Alistair Bain, a 38-year-old high school teacher who lives in the suburbs near Mr. Birley. The Whangaparaoa Peninsula is north of central Auckland. “You don’t have any of these at night.”

Chance Matches

Despite all the challenges, photographers say bioluminescence hunting is rewarding, in part because the phenomenon is endlessly surprising.

On a clear night, Mr. Bain drove about 40 miles to a beach where he hoped to photograph the Milky Way galaxy. When he got there, he saw not just a sky full of stars, but a shimmering shoreline. “This was something special that I came across by chance,” he said.

Another time, Mr. Davison got out of his car on a beach with low expectations. It was raining and he thought this would be a problem as heavy rain typically spoils a bioluminescence display.

In this case, however, the precipitation was so gentle that it stirred up glowing algae as far as he could see on the surface of the ocean. So he took his camera and started shooting.

“Unless he was there, unless we caught him, no one would believe what you were witnessing – they couldn’t even imagine it,” said Mr Davison. “That’s why I like to take pictures and videos of it. The best way to share what you see is through the power of an image.”